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College Football 2013 Preseason Rankings: The TR Top 25 And Beyond

August 28, 2013 - by Austin Link

College football is back again! Tomorrow the 2013 college football season will kick off — the last season in the highly controversial BCS era. One point in the BCS’s favor though: college football is more popular than ever. To add to the excitement, we’ve updated all our college football content for the 2013-14 season.

Our preseason rankings are somewhat unique in the universe of CFB rankings because they are entirely mathematically driven. Our formulas take in many forms of quantitative data, from previous years’ team ratings to the numbers of returning starters to last year’s turnover margin, and compute projected preseason ratings for all of the 125 FBS teams.

Computers vs. Humans

While our quantitative approach may miss some information that is best applied subjectively, it also brings several advantages. Human voters are inevitably biased and/or subject to the influences of media hype and groupthink. What they believe is important may not be supported — or may even be proven false — by hard data.

And while human voters may be decent at evaluating teams they are very familiar with, they may also be downright awful at gauging the strength of teams outside their zone of deep knowledge.

Our system, on the other hand, only incorporates factors that we can show make a difference, and it appropriately weights each piece of information. It uses a 100% consistent framework for evaluating all teams, and it can’t be jaded one way or another. It’s hard for a computer to overreact to a tough bowl loss, or a few lucky wins, and that’s a good thing.

You Have Team X WHERE???

Some of the rankings listed below may surprise and/or shock you, but don’t forget one key point. You may know a lot more about your favorite team than our system does, but the goal of this system isn’t to come up with the most accurate preseason rating for your favorite team. The goal is to come up with the most accurate rating system as a whole.

Also, just because our ratings may differ from the prevailing consensus doesn’t mean we’re wrong. Only time will tell, and several of the more unique preseason claims we made last year ended up coming true.

Finally, our preseason ratings also drive our college football preseason projections, which have made profitable predictions in each of the two years they have existed so far. Those projections currently reflect the preseason ratings listed in this post, but they will automatically update every day of the season based on the most recent game results that come in, and consequently, the updated team ratings.

Below we have posted below our preseason Top 25 for this upcoming year, followed by some highlights of teams that our system feels high or low about compared to the popular consensus. At the bottom of the post are our complete 2013-14 preseason team rankings.

The 2013 TR Preseason Top 25

Rank

Team

Rating

AP Rank

1

Alabama Crimson Tide

25.4

1

2

Oregon Ducks

25.3

3

3

Texas A&M Aggies

19.9

7

4

Oklahoma State Cowboys

17.4

13

5

Stanford Cardinal

17.1

4

6

South Carolina Gamecocks

15.8

6

7

Florida Gators

15.3

10

8

Ohio State Buckeyes

14.8

2

9

Wisconsin Badgers

14.8

23

10

Oklahoma Sooners

14.8

16

11

Texas Christian Horned Frogs

14.3

20

12

Georgia Bulldogs

14

5

13

Texas Longhorns

13.9

15

14

Nebraska Cornhuskers

13.8

18

15

Oregon State Beavers

13.8

25

16

Louisiana State Tigers

13.6

12

17

Arizona State Sun Devils

13.1

NR

18

Kansas State Wildcats

12.5

NR

19

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

12.4

14

20

Southern California Trojans

11.2

24

21

Clemson Tigers

10.9

8

22

Michigan Wolverines

10.7

17

23

Mississippi Rebels

10.4

NR

24

Florida State Seminoles

10.3

11

25

Brigham Young Cougars

8.8

NR

Underrated

Oklahoma State is ranked #13 in the AP poll, not a poor showing. Our numbers, however, see them as a potential national championship contender. This is indicative of a trend we see in our preseason ratings this year, that the Big 12 once again appears a little underrated. Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas State all also project higher in our numbers than in the voters’ minds. The Big 12’s reputation as an unstable conference may be preventing proper appreciation of the SEC’s only true rival for the best conference in football.

Ohio State’s going to run away with the Leaders division title, right? Not so fast, because Wisconsin has all the makings of a team that could make a jump this season. A low turnover margin, 15 returning starters and quality returning quarterback options all help alleviate the loss of Montee Ball. Of course, if last year’s Big Ten title game is any indication, the Badgers have no problem finding people to run behind their monstrous line. We see them battling the Buckeyes all year for a trip to the Rose Bowl.

Like Wisconsin, the Sun Devils have many of the traits of teams that tend to make a positive jump. They’ve also quietly put together solid squads each of the past three seasons. Put ASU in the mix of a weak South division in the Pac-12 and they are our favorite to reach the Pac-12 title game.

Overrated

For the last two years, Clemson’s actual win-loss record has been better than its expected record based on scoring margin. While this may seem good at first, it turns out to be mostly luck, and we’ve found that luck does not carry over from season to season. The Tigers will still be a solid team this year and they’re still our favorites in the ACC, but we don’t expect them to run away with it, and we don’t expect them to make a serious championship bid.

Normally teams that have years of success are the ones that get the benefit of the doubt, but in this case it appears the human voters are overly enthusiastic about an uncommon top 25 inhabitant. Northwestern returns a lot of players, but its high turnover margin last year could indicate that last year’s record was a bit of a fluke. Another important factor for the Wildcats is the overall returning strength of the Big Ten. Going 9-3 in the Big Ten is normally very difficult, but last year’s extremely weak conference artificially inflated Northwestern’s record. The Wildcats should still make a bowl this season, but a conference title is probably out of the question.

Louisville is the biggest outlier in our 2013 projections, a whopping 38 spots worse than its AP poll ranking. The Cardinals won the Big East, had a big BCS game victory, and return 15 starters, why are they so low? As it turns out, our system thinks Louisville got really lucky last year. In fact, over the last four years (all significant predictors of current year performance) we the Cards as almost exactly the FBS average team. Granted, their defeat of Florida last year was a serious upset, but hey, upsets do happen. Louisville may not be quite as bad as we have them ranked right now, but we do think an AP rank of #9 is pretty unrealistic.

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